Video: The Benefits of Baby Signing

Video Transcript

Hi I'm Therese Markham for TinyTalk in Warrington, and on behalf of BabyandPregnancy.co.uk I'm going to be giving you the benefits of baby signing in a nursery or childcare setting.

I have personally trained several nurseries in the area to baby sign, with the children in their care and the staff have absolutely loved the experience. They feel that the bond with the babies has strengthened and their daily life is less stressful and more enjoyable.

The major benefit of using baby signing in a nursery is the reduction of biting, biting is a sign of frustration. Baby signing wont completely eliminate biting but it does reduce the incidents of it occurring. How? Well babies can communicate and they can be understood so there is no more frustration.

The noise level in a childcare setting can also be reduced when there is baby-signing happening. The reason being that there is less screaming and less frustrated crying from the babies. When there is less biting, less crying and less noise, this reduces the stress levels of the staff and the staff are far happier in their work.

The benefits of using sign language with older children in nurseries and childcare settings is that it is a fun way of learning a different way of expressing themselves using their hold body.

It is also a great opportunity to teach them about people with disabilities and also introduce a language that is used in the deaf community.

The training program that I have used addresses a number of key objectives in the 'sure start guidance' and also in the 'curriculum guidance' in the foundation stage and we find that these are very handy for the managers come Ofsted time.